


Not All Soulmates

by HalfASlug



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, donna x lance (mentioned), tenth doctor x rose (mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 18:09:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6434902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HalfASlug/pseuds/HalfASlug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While at a festival celebrating love and romance, Donna and the Doctor take some time to reflect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not All Soulmates

Even before travelling with the Doctor, Donna had wound up at some strange parties. From gatecrashed school discos to police intervened raves, she’d seen it all.

Or she thought she had.

Tonight found her on a planet she had no hope of pronouncing, surrounded by trees taller than any she’d seen on Earth. The canopy above her wasn’t thick enough to block out the scarlet chunks of moonlight and the many stars above them glistened in the gaps. The Doctor had explained the slightly higher oxygen levels in the air might make her feel light headed and he hadn’t been wrong. The whole atmosphere was heady, especially when mixed with the music coming from the band. Their instruments were made from the forest around them, string instruments from thicker leaves, stripped and strung being between branches, woodwind out of hollowed out sticks and an array of percussion from what looked like snail shells the size of small cars.

The Doctor had told her this planet’s snail-like inhabitants were more like hermit crabs when it came to their shells. Though Donna admired the intricate designs of the shells on display, she wanted to avoid seeing a giant, naked snail if she could avoid it.

Thankfully the only aliens lifeforms around were the people currently hosting the party. They all had at least two feet on Donna, but were incredibly thin, giving them a spindly appearance. It was only worsened by the large yet delicate wings that emerged from the centre of their backs. Between them and their lilac skin, they were like storybook fairies.

One of the males nearly knocked her over as he moved through the crowd. As he apologised, Donna wondered what they’d make of the minuscule Tinkerbell.

With a smile on her face, she moved on from him and went in search of the Doctor. He’d been with her most of the day, explaining what it had been like the last time he’d visited this planet. Apparently he’d helped end a drought and was accepted as a guest of honour. Unlike most of their trips, this hadn’t been a setup and the pair had spent the day having fun and seeing the sights.

It surprised her, but Donna didn’t mention it. She had expected him to pick somewhere safe after their last excursion.

She hadn’t even been in that bus and she had nightmares about it.

After their arrival had been met with the locals welcoming the Doctor like an old friend, she expected him to be in the middle of the party, entertaining a group with stories. It was a shock to find him on the outskirts, sitting on a man-made bench, carved from a massive tree trunk. Unlike the rest of the party, it was brightly lit with vines covered in glowing flowers. There were several of these benches around the perimeter, mostly occupied by small groups or couples. The Doctor, however, was alone, watching everyone else with an unreadable expression.

“Budge up, you lump. How come you’re being a spiky wallflower?” she asked, flicking his fringe.

Glaring at her and needlessly checking his hair, he moved over to allow her to sit next to him. The lighting was much brighter whilst sitting in the alcove, but was otherwise surprisingly comfortable.

When he didn’t answer her, Donna turned to watch the dancers. It was strange how similar it was to dancing on Earth. Without the added moves involving wings, of course.

“Do you know what this festival is about?” he finally asked her, eyes still glued to the locals.

“Not sure. K’iku told me is was a celebration, but we were too busy setting up the buffet to get into it.”

“On Yt’jqb,” he began and Donna failed once again to catch how he pronounced the planet’s name, “the Shufi tradition is that they can only get married today, when the moon and sun’s position make this area light up. It’s a mass wedding. A celebration of love.”

Donna looked around and noticed that most of the Shufi dancing in the centre were couples, wrapped up in each other. “It’s like a serious Valentine’s Day.”

“Exactly.” The Doctor grinned and Donna sat up straighter. When they’d first started travelling together, she’d wanted to understand as much as she could about the alien cultures she was experiencing, rather than the all-inclusive, stay in the hotel mentality she had always had back home. It proved harder than expected with so many of them being completely different to anything she’d ever known. Relating to something she knew helped, but she worried the Doctor would judge her for being narrow minded.

She’d since learnt that he was proud of her for finding a way of understanding something new and now often used analogies like that to help her with his rambling explanations.

As she was about to ask if wanted to raid the buffet, the lights above her dimmed and the music changed to something slower, with a swelling bass. The groups on the outside stood back and through the spaces between them, Donna saw the couples were also stationary. Each pair was holding hands and facing each other with their eyes closed.

“Is this the wedding?” Donna whispered.

“It’s not really a wedding as you would know it. The whole festival acts as a pledge.” The Doctor pointed to the nearest couple and Donna saw a faint distortion in the air around their heads. “They’re telepaths.”

“Like the Ood?”

“More like me, but yes.” The Doctor turned to face her. “This part of the festival is where the couple show each other a vision of how they see their partner.”

“So all super model beautiful? Sounds nice.” Donna grinned, thinking of a still sadly faceless man somehow being convinced she was the most beautiful woman alive.

“No, they don’t work like that,” the Doctor said, interrupting her daydream. “They don’t feel comfortable with celebrity and those sorts of things. Putting a Shufi on a pedestal would be their equivalent of stalking. Much more creepy than romantic.”

“So they show each other - what? Their actual appearance?” Donna saw one of the male Shufi smiling widely at his soon-to-be sort-of-husband and wondered why anyone would be so happy to see a picture of themselves beamed into their head.

“Nah, it’s not just an image. It’s a whole…” He broke off with a sigh and took a moment to run his fingers through his hair. “How to explain this? It’s like… a best bits compilation when someone leaves a reality show, but with the partner’s running commentary. Except it’s all happening at once.”

Donna frowned. “So like a video collage?”

“No, but close enough.”

She tried to picture a montage of her life from someone else’s point of view. The idea was definitely intriguing. By the looks of things, some of the Shufi currently experiencing it were overcome with emotion and were crying softly.

“That does sound fun,” she murmured, thinking of some of her previous relationships. Compiling the happier moments together filled her with joy. Then she remembered how they went sour and the better parts were spoilt in retrospect.

“It’s more than that,” the Doctor said. He wasn’t looking at her anymore, or the couples, but was staring towards the stars, more visible in the lower lighting with a faraway look in his eyes. “Imagine the person you love showing you that, feeling everything they feel. All of the things you hate about yourself - the flaws, the mistakes, the vices - experiencing them through their eyes. Knowing they are know the worst parts of you and love them as well. To see all of it in a positive light. To know you are loved completely and irrevocably,” he finished at a whisper.

“I can’t,” Donna said in a tight voice. The Doctor’s eyes snapped to her and she saw how raw they were. “Imagine it, I mean.” She blinked rapidly, doing her best to shut up, but the quiet atmosphere and the company made her feel safe. “I thought with Lance - got that wrong though, didn’t I?” she chuckled disparagingly.

He bumped his shoulder against hers. “You weren’t to know. He tricked you.”

“All because he made me a bloody coffee. Typical, really. Bloke shows me a scrap of decency and I think it means something.”

“You know you deserve more than that, don’t you? At least a bucket of decency?”

Donna tried to nod or agree somehow but found she couldn’t. She settled for hiding how choked up she was instead. It wasn’t like she was one of those doe eyed idiots that fawned over the Doctor whenever he smiled at them, but his opinion was one she valued more than she’d ever admit to him.

The man had seen more than she could possibly comprehend, met the best and worst of all races, and looked at her, Donna Noble, like she mattered. There was no ulterior motive with him either. The way he was looking at her showed he truly believed she was worthy of all the praise he gave her.

She tried to remember the last person other than her granddad that told her she deserved more than whatever she had been settling for at the time.

Though his question went unanswered, the Doctor let it slide. Sitting with him, neither talking or touching, was the most secure Donna could remember being.

They were quiet for a few moments, content to let the atmosphere wash over them, before Donna spoke again.

“Did you-”

“Don’t.”

“What?” she laughed, taken aback by his growled response. “You don’t even know what I was going to say!”

His eyes, laced with suspicion, flicked over her. “You were going to ask if I ever…” He broke off and sighed. “If I ever came here with Rose.”

As it always was when they touched on this subject, his voice was weighed down with the pain Donna knew she had barely touched upon in her time as his friend. She never got much out of him despite her gentle encouragement. Sometimes he’d say her name and then change the subject. Mostly he’d tell her a story without mentioning any names, but she’d know by the way his face lit up who had been at his side.

He did a good job of hiding them, but his scars were still visible. She supposed she appeared the same to him.

“Yes.”

There had been such a long gap between his words that Donna didn’t realise what he’d said at first. She waited for more, but knew it wasn’t coming. His tense expression, lost in memories and bathed in scarlet moonlight, was focussed on the dancers. Eventually Donna mirrored his gaze when the music changed to something lighter. The couples broke apart and rejoined the rest of the party. She noticed that, although they dancing in larger groups, they would keep shooting smiles at each other.

It was exactly how she had pictured her wedding day, only for it turn out to be one of the worst days of her life. Next to her, the Doctor released a shuddering breath, and she remembered how it hadn’t been a highlight for him either.

“I miss her, Donna.”

Compared to the tall figures overcome with joy that surrounded them, the Doctor looked and sounded like a lost child when he admitted his worst kept secret to her. She had no words of comfort for him, but hoped saying the words would be enough to lessen his grief.

It was probably a mixture of the happiness of the occasion and the excess oxygen in the atmosphere that caused Donna to stand in front of the Doctor. “C’mon, Spaceman. Up you get.”

He blinked at her. “Why?”

“It’s intense fairy Valentine’s Day,” she told him with a shrug. “We’re both single. Let’s dance and pretend it doesn’t hurt sometimes.”

She held her hand out with a smile. He stared at it as though it was a scorpion.

“I don’t dance.”

“You do tonight. Get up.”

“Donna,” he warned her.

“You best not be rejecting me on Valentine’s Day!”

“It’s not-”

She slapped his shoulder and levelled him with one of her more ferocious glares. “Space bros before hoes.”

His bottom lip was already pouting and his eyebrows were halfway up his forehead in exacerbation before he realised what she’d said. All it took was a smirk on her behalf for him to crack. He tried to hide his smile as he rubbed his eye, but she caught it.

Grinning, he rose from his seat and held out his hand. “Donna Noble, will you be my Valentine’s mate? But not like that,” he quickly amended.

Donna took his hand with a soft smile. “Thought you’d never ask.”

Before he could give her a lecture on what type of dancing was acceptable or a time limit (judging by the look on his face he was about to issue both), Donna dragged him into the mass of tall bodies. Her whole life she had been actively searching for her soul mate, hoping the rest of the world would make sense when she found him. There was no way she could have predicted he’d come in the form of an alien twiglet in pinstripes, or that he’d be her best friend rather than anything else.

As she busted out some over-exaggerated, as-seen-on- _Strictly_ tango moves that had him in stitches, she realised that he was more important to her than any of the men she had been romantically linked to. Donna twirled him despite his reluctance, deciding that perhaps this friendship was what she had been looking for all along.


End file.
